St Joan of Arc (1412-31) the maid of France
Her early life
Jeanne la Pucelle, "Joan the
Maid", was born in 1412 at Domremy, in the Vosges region of Lorraine,
north-eastern France.
There was little to distinguish her as a child
from other children of the region. Illiterate but highly intelligent,
from the age of fourteen she began to experience inner promptings or
"voices" telling her she had a mission to win back the French kingdom
from the English.
However, she kept these voices secret for five years
until in January 1429 she persuaded a captain of Vaucouleurs to give
her an escort to go to meet the Dauphin (the king's son and heir) at
Chinon.
Background history
Previous to this in 1415, King
Henry V of England had scored a significant victory over the French
army of King Charles VI at the battle of Agincourt.
Following
further reverses, France agreed at the Treaty of Troyes (May 20,
1420) that the English king, Henry, would marry the French king's
daughter, Catherine of Valois, that the French throne would pass to
England on King Charles's death, thus bypassing and excluding the
Dauphin, the French king's son Charles, who was then seventeen years
old.
However, when both Henry V and Charles VI died in 1422, Henry's
brother, John of Lancaster, first Duke of Bedford, acting as regent for
his nephew, Henry VI, then only nine months old, undertook to complete
the conquest by tracking down the Dauphin, who had taken refuge beyond
the Loire.
He then laid siege to Orleans, which by its strategic
location north of the Loire made it the last obstacle to an assault
on the French heartland.
This is the background of events which led to Joan's decision to
follow the voices and take steps to implement her mission.
Much of
northern France as well as Burgundy was now in the hands of the
English.
The campaign
Joan impressed the Dauphin at their
first meeting, but he had theologians interrogate her for three weeks at
Poitiers, and after being reassured, she was given a suit of armour and
a staff of attendants and joined the army at Blois.
Ten days later they
had raised the seige of Orleans. Whether she took part in strategic
planning is uncertain or was there as a staff bearer, there is no doubt
that her presence at the head of the army and her belief in her mission
strengthened the morale of the soldiers.
A wound in her breast from an
arrow only served to enhance her reputation. A victory followed at
Patay, Troyes surrendered and Joan persuaded the Dauphin to be crowned
as King Charles VII of France at Rheims, with Joan standing at his side
with her standard.
Capture, trial and execution
Although keen to
press on to Paris, the French did not maintain their advantage and she
received a royal message to withdraw. She went to Compiègne, where the
Burgundians captured her and sold her to the English.
The English
attributed her success to witchcraft and wanted her tried and condemned
by the Church. Charles made no attempt to save her. Imprisoned at Rouen,
the seat of the English occupation government, she was tried for
witchcraft and heresy at an ecclesiastical court of the bishop of
Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon.
The charges against her were that she was in
league with the devil, wore men's clothes and disobeyed the Church.
Although ostensibly a church trial, in fact it was politically
motivated. Bishop Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais, under whose jurisdiction
it was conducted, was an English partisan.
It was financed by the
English. Joan's request to have "ecclesiastics of the French side" at
her trial was refused.
Although she answered he accusers with shrewdness and without fear,
refusing to betray her conscience, she was found guilty. She was handed
over to the civil authorities and burned at the stake in the
market-place of Rouen on 30 May 1431.
They reduced her body to ashes and
threw them on the Seine.
She wasn't yet twenty.
Retrial, rehabilitation and canonisation
About
twenty years later Joan's family asked for the case to be re-opened.
Pope Callistus III (1455-8) appointed a commission, which after
carefully examining all aspects of the case, quashed the original
verdict and declared her innocent (1456).
Another four hundred and fifty
years elapsed before she was beatified in 1910 and canonised in 1920.
However, the Church had not claimed her as a martyr for the faith.
It is
her integrity and simple faith that we admire: like Mary, she answered a
call she saw as coming from God and she followed it to the end.